5th Grade Mixtures and Solutions at the Beach

If you’re anything like me, you love a good beach day. Being near the water and feeling the sand between my toes is one of my favorite happy places. As a science teacher, I always find beaches such an interesting part of our lives that lends itself so well to classroom lessons.

In 5th Grade, students need to understand what mixtures and solutions are. More importantly, they need to be able to describe the physical properties and how to tell what makes some mixtures solutions. Beaches are a great place to explore these concepts!

All solutions are mixtures but not all mixtures are solutions!

In the Beaches Phenomena-Based 5E Unit Plan, students work through the concept of mixtures by exploring what washes up on beaches.

🏝 ENGAGE

Students begin this unit by exploring the phenomenon of things like seaweed and shells washing up on beaches. Students begin to wonder how these items wash ashore. We start filling in our class C-E-R (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) Chart by first identifying our Claim.

To get the hands-on experience, students complete a quick lab at this stage of the unit. Students combine salt and sand, salt and water, and sand and water in separate cups. Students observe what happens when the two substances are stirred together. 

 

🏝 EXPLORE

We take the quick lab from the Engage step of the lesson and do a larger scale lab with the same concept. As a class, we talk about what changes in physical properties, such as color or taste they might notice when two substances are mixed. Students are given six stations to complete. In these stations, students combine two substances and make observations. Specifically, students are looking for evidence of changes in physical properties or if their substances stayed the same.

An example of a change would be when students mix tea into a cup of water. The color and the taste of the water change when this occurs.

An example of substances maintaining properties is when students mix different values of coins together.

 

🏝 EXPLAIN

At this stage of the unit, it’s time to help students begin to understand what the differences between a mixture and a solution are. Using a nonfiction article, students are brought back to the Engage section of this unit. They also complete a simple yet meaningful lab.

I use salt and water to explain what a solution is. One teacher trick I use with my 5th graders to help them understand solutions is that you can’t easily separate the water from the salt once they are combined.

I then use sand and water to explain what a mixture is. They can see the sand. Non-solutions can be easily separated from one another after they are mixed.

 

🏝 VOCABULARY

Now that my students have had exposure to the words, we work on understanding the vocabulary of mixtures.

 

🏝 ELABORATE

To help my students understand the Law of Conservation of Matter, students will measure out small amounts of water and sand. After finding the mass of them, they’ll combine the salt and water together and measure the new solution they’ve made. Almost like magic (but it’s science!), the solution will equal the mass of the salt and water added together.

Students add their understanding of why this occurs to our C-E-R Chart. This is where our evidence collection unofficially ends (we can always add evidence later in the unit or the year!) for this concept.

 

🏝 EVALUATE

We review the claim and evidence and complete our CER with reasoning.

Students take an assessment to demonstrate their learning. The quiz includes 5 multiple choice questions, as well as an open response that’s differentiated for your learners.

 

GET THE RESOURCE!

If you want your science class to be another day at the beach (ba-dum-CHA!), all the work is done for you in my Beaches Phenomenon-Based Unit. You can get all the labs, activities, sample C-E-R Chart entries, and more by clicking on the picture below.